This invention relates to apparatus for lifting, transporting and stacking cargo containers, and more particularly to a one piece cargo carrier which can be quickly and easily mounted upon and dismounted from a conventional fork lift truck and method for use.
It is the general practice to store empty cargo containers at shipping or repair yards in stacked relation prior to their being moved elsewhere for transporting cargo. Apparatus for lifting, transporting or stacking containers have heretofore been proposed, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,449,882 to Perrott, U.S. Pat. No. 3,174,628 to Kirch, Jr. and U.S. Pat. No. 3,387,729 to Hinden et al. However, none of the proposed apparatus have disclosed a lifting article that is quickly mountable and dismountable upon a conventional fork lift truck, which furthermore has no moving parts, is extremely inexpensive to make and efficient to use.
As is well known, the grounds in and around yards where cargo containers are stored are extremely dusty and the air tends to carry large amounts of dust particles which can interfere with the moving parts of a mechanical device, increasing maintenance costs and thereby decreasing the profitability of a business enterprise. The present invention, being of one piece design, eliminates the problems encountered by dust, dirt and other particulate matter moving in the air.
Cargo containers typically are of either the forty foot or twenty foot long variety. Twenty foot long containers are customarily constructed with reinforcing members or ribs across the transverse direction of their undersides spaced apart to accommodate the forks of a fork lift truck. However, forty foot long containers are usually not constructed with such ribs but are provided with, as are twenty foot long containers, openings in the outer and uppermost corners of the long sides to accommodate metal fingers which are connected to a lifting device. Such lifting devices have been provided with moving parts or with complicated structure that is expensive to manufacture.